Study On Panic Emotion And Perceived Risk Of The Consumer Based On Product Harm Crises

In recent years, with the more and more fierce competition between different enterprises in the market, product harm crisis spread like a plague in all walks. Due to the sudden onset and the spread of the crisis, the product harm crisis will bring not only catastrophe to the enterprises, but also the physical and psychological damage to consumers. Consequently, a direct outcome of customer’s negative emotions such as frustration, panic, and even anger, will result in the loss of customers, and eventually affect the corporate reputation and brand image.Standing on the emotional perspective, the authors will use Risk-as-Fee lings hypothesis and the affect heuristic theory to discuss whether consumers’panic will affect their risk perception, that is, whether the likelihood of harm subjectively perceived by consumer will expand the objective probability of the fact. This has not been seen in the existing researches, so it has great innovation both in theory and in practice.Through the implementation of three experiments, the study came to the conclusion as follows:Firstly, after product-harm crisis, as the involved consumers, their perceived probability of critical products’harm is much larger than the objective probability of the event occurring. Therefore, after product-harm crisis, involved consumers’ perceived probability has an amplification effect on the objective probability due to the impact of panic.Secondly, after product-harm crisis, as the third-party groups, non-involved consumers’(bystanders) perceived probability of critical products’harm is much larger than the objective probability of the event occurring. Therefore, after product-harm crisis, non-involved consumers’(bystanders) perceived probability has an amplification effect on the objective probability due to the impact of panic.Third, the more familiar with involved consumers, the larger panic of non-involved consumers (bystanders) will have, thus due to the impact of panic, the perceived probability of critical products’harm to human body is greater. That is, when more familiar with involved consumers, the amplification effect of non-involved consumers’(bystanders) perceived probability on the objective probability will be more obvious.Fourthly, when the objective probability was low, lowly involved consumers’ panic was larger than that of highly involved ones; the result for perceived probability was the same. Therefore, the lower the involvement for consumers, the more panic they will have, thus due to the intermediary impact of panic, the perceived probability of critical products’harm to human body is greater. That is, when objective probability is relatively low, the lower the involvement for consumers, the more obvious the amplification effect of their perceived probability on the objective probability will be. When the objective probability was high, highly involved consumers’panic was larger than that of lowly involved ones; the result for perceived probability was the same. Therefore, the higher the involvement for consumers, the more panic they will have, thus due to the intermediary impact of panic, the perceived probability of critical products’harm to human body is greater. That is, when the objective probability of product-harm crisis is relatively high, the higher the involvement for consumers, the more obvious the amplification effect of their perceived probability on the objective probability will be.